"What are mortals that you are mindful of them?" A Reading of the Biblical Message about Human Being and Nature from the New Vision of Science and Ecology

The author integrates the new scientific view of the universe with a rereading of the Genesis creation narratives. He introduces a reading of the human being as Vicar of God in light of \"precomprehension\" offered by science and the ecological crisis. New biblical interpretation of the unique role of humanity is compelled both by increased scientific knowledge of the cosmos and also by ecological destruction. In particular, the ecological crisis has emphasized that human domination of the world may destroy it. Interpreting Genesis from a New Testament viewpoint, particularly from the writings that announce a \"new creation\" performed by Jesus Christ, may remake the original mission of Vicar of God and lead Creation, affected by sin, to the new reality that it longs for

Multiple regimes and coalescence timescales for massive black hole pairs ; the critical role of galaxy formation physics

We discuss the latest results of numerical simulations following the orbital decay of massive black hole pairs in galaxy mergers. We highlight important differences between gas-poor and gas-rich hosts, and between orbital evolution taking place at high redshift as opposed to low redshift. Two effects have a huge impact and are rather novel in the context of massive black hole binaries. The first is the increase in characteristic density of galactic nuclei of merger remnants as galaxies are more compact at high redshift due to the way dark halo collapse depends on redshift. This leads naturally to hardening timescales due to 3-body encounters that should decrease by two orders of magnitude up to $z=4$. It explains naturally the short binary coalescence timescale, $\sim 10$ Myr, found in novel cosmological simulations that follow binary evolution from galactic to milliparsec scales. The second one is the inhomogeneity of the interstellar medium in massive gas-rich disks at high redshift. In the latter star forming clumps 1-2 orders of magnitude more massive than local Giant Molecular Clouds (GMCs) can scatter massive black holes out of the disk plane via gravitational perturbations and direct encounters. This renders the character of orbital decay inherently stochastic, often increasing orbital decay timescales by as much as a Gyr. At low redshift a similar regime is present at scales of $1-10$ pc inside Circumnuclear Gas Disks (CNDs). In CNDs only massive black holes with masses below $10^7 M_{\odot}$ can be significantly perturbed. They decay to sub-pc separations in up to $\sim 10^8$ yr rather than the in just a few million years as in a smooth CND. Finally implications for building robust forecasts of LISA event rates are discussedComment: 13 pages, 3 Figures, Invited Paper to appear in the Proceedings of the 11th International LISA Symposium, IOP Journal of Physics: Conference Serie

Z_2-graded Gelfand-Kirillov dimension of the Grassmann algebra

We consider the infinite dimensional Grassmann algebra E over a field F of characteristic 0 or p, where p>2, and we compute its Z_2-graded Gelfand-Kirillov dimension as a Z_2-graded PI-algebra

Density Estimation Trees as fast non-parametric modelling tools

Density Estimation Trees (DETs) are decision trees trained on a multivariate dataset to estimate its probability density function. While not competitive with kernel techniques in terms of accuracy, they are incredibly fast, embarrassingly parallel and relatively small when stored to disk. These properties make DETs appealing in the resource-expensive horizon of the LHC data analysis. Possible applications may include selection optimization, fast simulation and fast detector calibration. In this contribution I describe the algorithm, made available to the HEP community in a RooFit implementation. A set of applications under discussion within the LHCb Collaboration are also briefly illustrated.Comment: Presented at the Workshop on Advanced Computing and Analysis Techniques (ACAT2016

THE ROLE OF THE IMF IN DEBT RESTRUCTURINGS: LENDING INTO ARREARS, MORAL HAZARD AND SUSTAINABILITY CONCERNS

In recent years the IMF has made efforts to build an improved “crisis prevention and resolution framework” that minimizes the size and frequency of bailouts, largely out of a concern with the possible moral hazard consequences of its interventions. This framework, however, which includes an emphasis on greater private sector involvement, the encouragement of the use of collective action clauses and a more effective enforcement of access limits to IMF lending has not generated an observable change in practice. The institution may be trying to achieve an almost impossible objective: imposing more stringent criteria to constrain its intervention capacity without recognizing that such an approach is ultimately inconsistent with the IMF’s intrinsically political nature. This is clearly evidenced in the cases of countries that have to restructure their debts. The failure of the SDRM project reflected, among other factors, the prevailing view in the United States administration that market forces should be relied on to find an “solution” in these situations almost on their own. But this has in practice meant that the IMF relinquishes its potential contribution to improving the result of sovereign debt restructurings. In fact, the IMF has frequently exerted pressure on the debtor and its views have often been biased in favour of the creditors’ interests. In particular, its lending into arrears policy (LIA) has been used as a means to induce debtor governments to “accommodate” to these interests. But by providing financing to the debtor through its LIA policy the Fund could potentially play a positive role in reducing the gap between the creditors’ “reservation price” and the country’s repayment capacity while, at the same time, making sure that the debt burden becomes sustainable. In this way, both debtor countries and its creditors would be better off. However, the Fund should not support “market-friendly” sovereign debt restructurings that are incompatible with sustainable debt paths and may represent a greater risk for its resources than more “coercive” alternatives. Indeed, the paradox is that “investor friendly” debt restructurings represent quite the opposite of a market outcome: they require active and often massive IMF interventions and the level of the resulting haircut is sub-optimally low.